“Crulic: The Path To Beyond” by Anca Damian

A Romanian feature-length animated documentary Crulic — The Path to Beyond will make its US debut at MoMA’s New Directors/New Films Festival (March 21-April 1). Filmmaker Anca Damian’s feature tells the life story of Claudiu Crulic, a 33 year old Romanian who died in a Polish prison while on hunger strike. The trailer (below) reveals a strong visual style, combining hand drawn, collage, stop-motion and cut-out animation techniques. Let’s hope this film gets wider international exposure.

Looks like an interesting work. Don’t recall seeing any animmated films from Romania before. I’ll have to start looking.

dude

yet another depressing romanian movie.The medium plot goes like this : Here we are in the life of a random citizen that is facing an absurd situation, we’re going to show you some of his little joys, but in a very realistic cinical way with a soundtrack of silence or better yet monotone soundtrack of the city, some factory or some stupid telephone. This might be something else because it’s an animation, but outside of that fact seems to be a standard romanian movie.

Someguy

You’re totally right.
Why don’t they do a movie about talking animals trying to find their way home or an odd couple learning to become friends, or ‘true love’.

God forbid anyone make a film that isn’t designed to sell toys, videogames, misogyny, war, and gender/ethnic/racial stereotypes.

And let’s also ignore the fact that this actually happened and while it’s true, Crulic never ran a company that made ipods, perhaps this biography might be worth learning about.

If animation is going to be taken seriously, which seems to be a perpetual gripe on the internet, then the animation community will need to begin to embrace animated films extend beyond the Pixar/Dreamworks/Bluesky brand. That is not to say all non-kids animated films have to be liked regardless of appeal or quality, but the general *taste* of those most interested in the progress of animated films as an entertainment media has to expand.

To get an idea of what I mean, compare the number of comments for the “art house” animated shorts to the comments on yet another Looney Tunes update.

SG.

lbon

So nice to see independent animated features growing out from nowhere! Of course they can hardly compete with the big studio’s works, but they offer alternatives at least. I wish this movie the very best!!!!

This film will be at the SXSW festival as well. We got a press badge there to cover it and we plan on doing an audio interview with some of the creators of this film so check in with the Podcast later on!